There is a communication standard that controls how phonecalls are sent and received. It's harder to see in the analog world, but very easy to see in the digital world. In the cellphone industry, there are three protocols - GSM, CDMA (and its variants), and the protocol that only Nextel used and Motorola supported. CDMA (which is the one I'm familiar with) uses code multiplexing in order to transmit digitized voice across the air using a 2.5MHz wide spectrum. It uses messages, including messages with containers, to allow the base station and the phone to exchange information and control each other. VOIP is even more explicit in the SIP protocol. So, to claim that a phonecall doesn't follow an established communication protocol doesn't hold up.

But, you're right in that a phonecall is more akin to the HTTP communication protocol vs. HTML. For that, I can point to the IVR protocol that bank's use to prevent customers from talking to real people. That's not a computer language, is it?

My criteria for good software:
  1. Does it work?
  2. Can someone else come in, make a change, and be reasonably certain no bugs were introduced?

In reply to Re^9: Looking for old Perl CGI code by dragonchild
in thread Looking for old Perl CGI code by ton

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